Thursday 18th of July 2019 - St Johns (Newfoundland, Canada)

View from the cabin - door shut due to the rain.

Rain, winds and freezing temperatures.  That was our first impression of St Johns - only slightly warmer than Iceland.

Later in the day

During the day however the sky cleared up, giving us a beautiful sailout from the harbour.

Dave on signal hill

Our tour today took us to a couple of the more impressive landmarks near St Johns.

Cape Spear Lighthouse

First stop was signal hill - overlooking the entrance to the harbour (just FYI - the entrance is around 90m wide - our ship only had 15m on each side clearance!).

Signal Hill has a few interesting historical notes - it was the place where Marconi placed the first trans-atlantic radio transmission.  

View from Cape Spear

We then took a drive through the city, looking at various sights (churches/etc) - they are some of the oldest constructed on the north american continent.

We drove out through some fishing villages and finally to the Cape Spear lighthouse - this is also the easternmost point of the americas.  In WW2 it was a military base and a lot of convoys were gathered here at St Johns to join up with their escorts across to Britian.

Sailing out of the harbour

The sun came out after lunch and we had a beautiful sail out - we even encountered a pod of whales heading north (there were around a dozen of them).